How to force the removal of Folder Redirection from specific user accounts

We have a folder redirection policy in place for all of our users in combination with a roaming profile policy – this policy is applied to the OU that contains our users. Unfortunately this policy was accidently linked to the root of our domain too, causing our Domain Admin users to be redirected too – something we do not want. When the mistake was discovered, the policy was unlinked, but the redirection remained (despite being set to revert when users fall out of scope). I tried re-applying the policy, modifying the out of scope policy and then moving the Domain Admin user out of scope, but it failed to remove the folder redirection.

In the end, the solution was straight forward enough:

Create a new OU (I used "Temp") and move the affected user(s) there:

Create and link a new Group Policy Object to the new OU. Name it something descriptive so you know what it is in future – Folder Redirection Removal.

Edit the group policy, drill down to User Configuration > Windows Settings > Folder Redirection and right click – properties on each folder you want to reset. Set the setting to “Basic – Redirect everyone’s folder to the same location” and set the target folder location to “Redirect to the local userprofile location”.

Select the settings tab and make sure the Policy Removal setting is set to “Redirect the folder back to the local userprofile location when the policy is removed.”

Set that for each folder you want to reset. Close the Group Policy Object Editor, and GPMC. Log onto the user's account on each computer you want to remove the redirection on – in my case, several servers. Check the location of the redirected folders to make sure it’s been removed. Once you’re sure, you can move your user back to the correct OU.

Thank you for this information. If I move all the users into this to force the removal, would the Roaming profile still work, and would the documents, desktop that was redirected get copied to the right spot? I have setup folder redirection since we we moved to Win7 and its .V2 profile. Since the migration is done, we don’t need the folder redirection anymore, and I want to make sure that the users’ XP profile gets copied into the V2 profile.

Thank you SO MUCH, I’ve been struggling with trying to set redirect back to the local profile all day, and until I found your article nothing worked! I’m so glad you shared this, now I can finally get back to more pressing issues.